Chilly Nights of Chili

I've ranted and raved before about what it takes to be "chili" ok so technically that was about the use of chile in chili...guess that means I can rant about the perfect Texas chili now.   What is Texas chili you ask?  Well let's see, it is not:

• Something that contains beans
• Served on a bun
• Eaten over spaghetti
• Something that has celery, rice, or other funny ingredients in it

Ok, so I'm sure you have some reason why I'm wrong, why? Because everyone who likes chili is passionate about what it contains/doesn't contain, how it's served or what you should eat it with.  How can one food inspire such strong feelings, after all it's just a meat stew right? Well it might have something to do with the fact that there are so many regional variations on the dish ranging from ingredients (the aforementioned beans, celery, rice, etc.) to how it's served, in Cincinnati for instance it's served over spaghetti ?!? (if you could only see the alarm on my face!)  Generally speaking here in Texas (aka God's Country) we've accepted there are no beans in chili, it isn't served over spaghetti, it's not a sloppy joe and really unless you're in a Tex-Mex restaurant it doesn't go over tortillas/tamales/burritos, etc. It is socially acceptable to serve it over/with Fritos and cheese or cornbread but beware, doing something else will definitely mark you as a non-Texan.

Spicy Whiskey Chili

1/4 cup good quality whiskey
4 teaspoons dried oregano
4 teaspoons ground cumin
4 teaspoons cocoa powder
4 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2½ cups beef broth
2 medium onions, cut into ¾-inch pieces (about 2 cups)
3 red or orange bell peppers, stems and seeds removed, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon Chalula chipotle hot sauce
2 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 teaspoons backstrap molasses
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2½ pounds sirloin steak, ground on 'chili' grade grinder
3-4 slices of bacon (3 if it's thicker cut) cut into ½-inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste

1. Saute onions in 1 tablespoon olive oil until they are translucent in a large, heavy bottomed pot or dutch oven. Add bacon once onions turn translucent and let bacon get nearly fully crisped. Add garlic and bell peppers with bacon.
2. Add ground sirloin and let it brown, mixing in  2 teaspoons of oregano, cumin, cocoa powder, and coriander.
3. Add tomatoes with juices to pot along with 2 teaspoons of molasses and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. Add whiskey and beef broth and let it come up to a boil.
4. Once boiling add remainder of dried spices and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to pot as well as hot sauce.  Taste for flavoring and add salt/pepper as needed.
5. Let simmer, stirring occasionally for at least 1 hour, if chili is not at your desired thickness add tomato paste to adjust. 
6. Serve with sharp cheddar cheese, sour cream (or greek yogurt) and avocado to top.

While I usually try to stick to a pretty 'paleo' diet anyway, our crossfit box is holding an eight-week paleo challenge starting this Saturday....eight weeks is a long time so I decided it was ok to let myself enjoy some cheese and sour cream with my chili :)  If you were to leave those dairy items off the list you'd have a paleo pot of Texas Chili...quite tasty for a chilly winter night! 

Note about chili, it's tasty the day of but it gets better with a little sitting around...read as: leftovers are worth fighting for!

Good Old Fashioned Beanless Texas Red Chili

To Can or Not To Can...

For the record I had never touched canning equipment or even had a clue how to can until this past summer, thanks for my mom (and my own interest in some more traditional cooking concepts) I learned exactly how to can this summer. The produce available all summer long made the task so simple, everything from onion relish, onion marmalade, spicy tomato chutney, peach preserves, vanilla peach jam to tomatillo jam, strawberry rhubarb jam and of course many veggies that ended up in pickling brine! For a glimpse at the many things we canned, check out this set of pictures on mom's Flickr stream. By no means will this be the end of my canning adventures, merely the beginning, I think there might be some canning coming up for Xmas gifts too :)

Canning used to feel like something that maybe my great grandmother would have undertaken, it didn't interest me all that much because to me there were so many options for cooking with the fresh products available to me, why can them? Part of the allure for me comes from the fact that it's one of those lost arts (in my mind), something that historically speaking everyone used to do but it kind of fell from popularity. It seems the current economic situation has brought preservation of food back into vogue as this summer canning supplies were easy to find and canning was easy to see on TV cooking shows and in magazines. So how did it come about?

The canning process dates back to the late 18th century where the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, concerned about keeping his armies fed, offered a cash prize to whoever could develop a reliable method of food preservation. Nicholas Appert envisioned preserving food in bottles, like wine. After 15 years of experimentation, he realized if food is sufficiently heated and sealed in an airtight container, it will not spoil.

Nicolas Appert, developer of the canning process.

Oh the French, well thanks to Appert for his experimentation and development of the method, as all good things do, canning went through many iterations with the British using tin cans beginning in 1813 and some of our own American countrymen developing wholesale canning operations for commercial canning around the same time.

So the basic process here is that you cook/create the substance you plan to can (brine the pickles, make the jam, etc.) then you tightly put the lids on the jars and you boil them for a set amount of time. I have oversimplified things a bit but the idea is the same regardless of what you are canning. Canning can be done in one of two ways, first via a pressure cooker (those foods that must be canned this way include most veggies, meats, seafood, poultry and dairy products), or second, with a boiling water bath (foods that can be canned this way are highly acidic ones with a pH below 4.6,[1] such as fruits, pickled vegetables, or other foods to which acidic additives have been added).

While we canned lots of things and will likely be reprising our canning fiesta later in the year, for now we're just enjoying the fruits of our labor. To that end, I wanted to share a tomatillo jam that has been the dark horse of the canned goods here, it was the unexpected and yet very well liked recipe. It's delicious on warm cornbread, pork or poultry (not the fanciest picture here but it's sitting on a tasty pork tenderloin).


Tomatillo (or Ground Cherry) Jam
From The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves by Linda Ziedrich

3 lbs Tomtillos
4 Cups White Sugar

1. Remove the husks from the fruit, quarter or half them (depending on how large they are).
2. Place fruit in a large sauce pot, set pan over low heat and cover the pan. Cook the fruit, stirring occasionally, until it is soft. Mash it briefly with a potato masher. Remove the pan from the heat.
3. Stir in the sugar. Over medium heat, heat the mixture until the sugar is dissolved. Raise the heat to medium-high and boil the jam until a drop mounds in a chilled dish.
4. Ladle the jam into pint or half-pint mason jars. Add lids and rings, and process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath.